Monday, January 13, 2014

Max a Chat

Max is a talker. Yesterday, at the Phoenix Zoo, he asked,
“What did I talk about when I was three months old.”

I told him, “you weren’t talking yet, but a few months
later, you started talking and you never quit.”

Erik said, “You wake up in the morning chatting and you
don’t stop til bedtime. Sometimes, you fall asleep in the middle of the
sentence.”

None of which he heard because he had already moved on,
talking about the different ways his rock could fly up in the air and down in
the air. “It’s an organized rock.”

Today, when I was working at home and he was flying his Star
Wars jetfighter around and I asked him “Maxi, do you want a sandwich?”

He said, “You need to stop mean at me.”

“What did I do mean?”

“You talked to me while I was talking to you and you called
me Maxi and I don’t like that because I was talking and you are mean at me.”

“What should I call you? Maxintosh? Maxallot? Maxalovebutt?”

“Max. Max is fine. And no talking.”

Yesterday, his grandma asked to take a picture. “Yes, you
can take a picture of me. But just the back of my head. “

Upon finding Zoe and Max staring hard at the Walking Dead
when the DVR reverted to the channel, AMC, I started running around the room,
trying to turn the TV off, asking, why are you watching zombies? Max says, “WE
WATCH ZOMBIES BECAUSE YOU WATCH ZOMBIES.” Parenting 101 reminder.

We went to Phoenix for the weekend, stayed at the Hilton
Garden Inn. A fine hotel but nothing to write home about. Max says, “I want to
go back to the hotel. Why did we leave? Someone will steal our spot.”

This morning, before sandwich, after cereal, during my
English Muffin.

“Can I have some French Toast.”

“I don’t have any French Toast. This is an English Muffin.”

“I like French Toast. But English Toast is OK. Bring it to
me in the TV Room. That’d be great.”

I spend most of my life looking for Lego Parts. It is a line
on my CV. I’m pretty good at it. Today, I gave him a flashlight and said I had
too much work and it’s too hard to find the tiny guys and their heads and legs
and single Lego pieces.I told him he
had to look. He found the Star Wars guy’s Helmet under the couch. “Miss Mommy.
Miss Mommy. I found it. It was SO easy. Why you think it’s so hard?”

After I asked him if he liked being a monkey: “Yes. I
haven’t seen giraffes in a long time.”

Max talks in all caps a lot. There is little he has no
opinion about. He has been talking for three years straight. Now that he’s
four, he sometimes lets me or Erik or Zoe get a word in edgewise. Sometimes
not. Sometimes, if anyone else tries to talk, he says, “but I was talking.” And
we say, “No kidding.” But he doesn’t hear us because he’s already talking about
something else.

My ears have been filled with the sounds of Max for four
years now. When he’s not here or he’s asleep, the silence is deep. If he’s
taking a nap, sometimes I want to go and wake him up. We could chat about
Transformers and why they’re not always cars or Star Wars and why they wear
helmets or giraffes and how tall tall tall tall tall they are. Or I could get
some work done.

Oh wait. Never mind. Here he is.

“We can talk about the nap later. Let’s play this book
again.”

He’s in his room, saying “tick tock tick tock. OK. Time to
go.” The audience? Not always necessary but no matter how much work I have to
do (semester. Begins today.) I can’t stop myself from following his voice to
find out what he’s talking about, even if it’s just English Muffin
expectations.

When I found him, I said, "You need to take a nap."
He said, "I can't. I'm missing you."
And that is how four year olds nap. By talking the whole time.